31 October 2011

"Immersion 2.0 gets an A-plus from students"

It's the next logical step in second-language immersion.Call it Ultimate Immersion. Or Immersion 2.0. Not just anglophones studying in French, but anglophones and francophones studying together in the same class. It exists in Quebec, despite Bill 101. This new immersion is part of a three-year pilot project in desegregated education in Quebec, known as Option Études.

It works like this: You recruit kids out of Grade 6. You go into English public schools, and into French public schools. You select kids with good social skills, and you put them together in the same class starting in Grade 7. From there, they go on to spend half their year in an English high school, and the other half in a French high school. This is the way it has been working in Châteauguay since the fall of 2007, when the first mixed class of 32 kids was created.

Not that we should expect school desegregation to become the norm in Quebec. Separate French and English school systems still reflect the majority will of both language communities in this province, and no other Option Études programs are under way ...